Republicans wish Trump would vanish but won’t dare make him disappear

There will be a delightful development in US politics in 2023. Yes, Donald Trump will still run clumsily rampant, with legal and political imbroglios surrounding him. But in a very real sense, things will be different. Trump is out of office, and the courts have made clear that, since he is a private citizen, he will face whatever justice due him as one, even as formal indictments loom.

Last week in Washington, the committee of the House of Representatives investigating the January 6 insurrection made criminal referrals against Trump to the Justice Department; the next day, a different committee voted to release six years of his tax returns to the public. He lost his bid for re-election two years ago, of course, and just led a motley crew of hand-picked senatorial candidates to defeat in the November midterm elections.

And yet, despite all of this, he is a declared candidate for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024. This prospect would seem an incipient catastrophe to the few remaining adults in the party, but Trump is keenly aware of his loopily obsessive base of support, and has the sociopathic capability to deliberately undermine the party in the 2024 general election if he doesn’t get his way. This leaves the Republican Party stuck between a Trump and a hard place. And since these folks showed a long time ago they didn’t have the spine to stand up to Trump, it’s hard to feel sorry for them.

So what will happen in 2023? Remember that the important battles go on behind the scenes. First, watch how the Republican primary race coalesces. A large field helps Trump. His superpower is running with an implacable base against a disparate slate of opponents who split the vote.

Can the parts of the Republican Party not interested in a political suicide mission do anything to limit that? It’s going to be difficult. Sitting senators such as Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio and Lindsey Graham can smell weakness, and you don’t want to get between an ambitious senator and a debate stage in any case. Beyond them, it’s a given these days that various rabblerousers and wingnuts on the right will use a half-baked presidential campaign as a ticket to a lucrative, if dubious, celebrity. They flock to these races to the point where there’s even a name for the resulting phenomenon: the Republican Primary Clown Car.

Also, keep an eye out for some wildcards who weren’t present in 2016. First, there’s Ron DeSantis, the Florida governor who wants to present himself as a more electable alternative to Trump – but one with the same bitter appeal to the worst instincts of the party. Two, Liz Cheney, the most prominent Trump prosecutor on the right, seems to have the personal bravery to take her fight against him to the heart of her party. And third, watch for a possible run by Tim Scott. He’s an African-American senator who could force the party to confront its plainly racist elements – and might provoke Donald “the blacks love me” Trump into some inappropriate remarks.

Of course, the Democrats have some problems too. Ignore the campaign to make Biden seem aged or feeble. Aside from a few clumsy mistakes (such as the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan), he saved America from another four years of Trump. He runs a strong, quiet and effective administration. This has led him to remarkable legislative success in the past two years. He also marshalled an unexpected win in the midterms.

He is getting on, however, and there’s no guarantee he can run for re-election. (He would be 88 at the end of a hypothetical second term.) That’s a problem. Vice President Kamala Harris would be his natural successor. But: Harris ran for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2020 and did a terrible job at it. And her tenure as VP has been rather mysterious; she has been the most invisible VP in memory. But conventional wisdom is that the party will have a hard time displacing a black woman in the natural line of succession.